Saturday, August 04, 2007

Freemuse on "Underground" Music in Lebanon

Very useful report from Al-Hayat on the Freemuse conference in Istanbul earlier this year, specifically on three papers dealing with music censorship in the Middle East. Most interesting is the report on Lebanon, which discusses, among other things, crackdowns on heavy metal music, rapper Rayess Bek, and Hizbollah's liberalizing attitudes toward pop music. There's also a short report on a presentation by Ourrad Rabah of the fabulous Algerian rap group MBS.